Sound Engineering Basics

Creating Your Own Sounds

Creating your own sounds can not only be rewarding but can save many problems when it comes to copyright clearance issues and publicly releasing an audio track. Most sound engineers/producers have piles of the latest sample CD's to incorporate into there music masterpieces. By creating your own sound snippets and loops to use for music production can help set you apart from the generic sound of the sample CD's (I've heard that beat, and it sounds like another song I know) and give yourself unique sound that no one else has used in recent tracks.

There are infinite ways to engineer your own sounds from recording an industrial sound with a microphone to using a wave manipulating program to create a kick drum sound. One of the popular ways that sample CD's are created is the sampling of a hardware audio synthesizer. By creating what's known as a "patch" (a series of knob settings) you can run midi scores through these oscillating audio synthesizers and the patch parameters will manipulate the sound to sound like an electronic instrument playing your music score. This audio is then recorded using a sound editing program and then snipped and trimmed to come out as a clean sounding audio loop, riff or note depending on the type of sample that is being created.

One shot (a single note or sound being played) can be loaded into a a midi sequencing program and can be altered in pitch, volume, pan and timing to create a new riff, loop or solo or song to be recorded.

Editing your Audio So It Sounds Right

Some tips to help keep your audio from clipping - if you've recorded a one shot sample pull it up in your audio editing program, and select the magnifying tool now go to the beginning of the sound time line and select the first few micro seconds of sound apply an amplitude envelope that has a fade in and go to the end of the time line repeat the process with a amplitude envelope of a smooth fade out this will help get rid of a clicks and sparks that would surly become a nightmare when sequencing a complex audio project.